Where does PATH at login come from?

[Eric S. Raymond]

In <1990Nov27.163915.3799 at diku.dk> Kim Christian Madsen wrote:
> thorinn at rimfaxe.diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen) writes:
> >gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
> >>Typically there are three possible sources for the initial PATH:
> >>	The shell itself will have some hard-wired default PATH.
> >>	A system-wide configuration file (/etc/profile, for example)
> >>	can reset the PATH, if the shell reads the configuration file.
> >>	Each user can have his own configuration file in his home
> >>	directory; names are usually .profile (sh) and .login (csh).
> 
> >Four and five: login and init. On our system (Mt. Xinu 4.3), login
> >does create an initial environment with a PATH, while init doesn't.
> 
> Not to mention .cshrc (csh) or .tcshrc (tcsh) in a networking environment,
> where .login (csh && tcsh) is not sourced when logging in remote. And 
> /etc/cshrc the csh equivalent to the systemwide /etc/profile in the Bourne
> Shell, supported by some csh's.
> 
> V7, System III, and BSD derived systems have a minimal PATH set by the
> login program, while System V derived systems have no builtin PATH from
> login, they get the PATH from the places mentioned by Doug above and the
> ones given by me.

...but if your system has an /etc/default/login, login may set it from there.
Here's the one from my AT&T 6386 (running SVr3.2).

TIMEZONE=EST5EDT
HZ=100
ULIMIT=12280	# was 4096
CONSOLE=/dev/console
PASSREQ=NO	# was YES
ALTSHELL=YES
SUPATH=/bin:/etc/:/usr/bin/:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X/bin:/usr/X/adm
-- 
      Eric S. Raymond = eric at snark.thyrsus.com  (mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)